Software Deployment

Hi guys,

In appreciation of all the help I got from this site, I kindly present to you my turn to give something back as well..

Have you ever tried installing Rightfax Client 9.4 during and OSD built task sequence? Technically, it cannot be done (I even read somewhere that Captaris aprently state son their website that the rightfax 9.4 client CANNOT be deployed using a task sequence), because the client installation requires the "allow users to interact with this program" tick box checked, and as we all know, the moment you do that, you cannot use that specific program through a task sequence.

The other BIG problem is the printer driver. When installing rightfax, the client will automatically use the printer driver of the default printer, and if no default printer exists, it will install the rightfax document writer printer driver. The problem with windows 7 here is that by default things like the Office Document Image Writer and the Windows fax and Scan printer drivers are installed, and as such, when installing rightfax, it will automatically use on of those printers' drivers, instead of the trusty old HP Laserjet 5 driver we are so used to by now.

All of these present some unique challenges to overcome during especially an OSD build, and with our environment consisting of almost 3000 machines all using rightfax, this was something that we simply HAD to address..

So, this is how I went about successfully deploying the client during OSD build:

Firstly, upon testing, we saw that the "HP LaserJet 4100 Series PCL6" printer driver that comes with windows 7 works 100% when used as the driver for the rightfax printer. So we knew that in order for the install to work, we would need to get that printer onto the machine, and also make it the default printer, so that, when the rightfax client installs, it will use that printer as the base driver for itself. The problem of course with printers are that they are profile based, so we needed a way of creating this default printer for ANY user that logs on, even the system account that installs the rightfax program. So, this was the starting point for me, and this is how I did it.:

First, you have to install a windows 7 machine using the normal install media (DVD). Upon completing the installation, configure your favorite settings, like display settings, show all files and folders, etc, and of course, don't forget to install a local HP Lasjerjet 4100 Series PCL6 printer, and specify it as a print to file printer (instead of normal LPT1, etc). A silent install of the printer can also be done by running the following command from an elevated command prompt:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /if /b "TempPrinter" /f %windir%\inf\prnhp002.inf /r "file:" /m "HP LaserJet 4100 Series PCL6"

Then, you have to configure the DEFAULT profile to create this printer for any user that logs on to that system. For the purpose of this exercise, I called this printer TempPrinter, and then followed the following mircosoft article to ensure that this printer is created for any user that logs onto the system:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/252388

Now that we have our base system set up, we need to capture it as an image on SCCM in order to use it for OSD. There are numerous articles on the web explaining how to do that, and how to make it available as a boot image through the PXE boot process. Use the following link as a starting point. It was written for SMS 2003, but it's almost exactly the same process anyway :)

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/360-step-1-create-an-os-capture-cd/

So, now we have a boot image that we can use to deploy our machine with a default HP LaserJet 4100 Series PCL6 printer installed that will print to file, regardless of who logs on.

Next we need to package the Rightfax client and have it installed without any user interaction.

For this part of the process, I actually created 2 packages. The first package installs the C++ Runtime components, which is a pre-requisite for rightfax to install. Of course, this package has to be set to run with /quiet to prevent any dialog boxes from popping up.

Then, the second Rightfax package is the installation itself. here I created the program portion of the package to actually run all the installation commands for a silent install: setup.exe /quiet=true /allowShutdown=false /add="FaxUtil,FaxCtrl," /rightFaxServer="myservername" , and then on the "environment" tab I specified the "allow users to interact with this program" option.

That takes care of the installation packages. Next, we need to actually deploy it as part of the OSD task sequence.

So, back in my task sequence, I first installed office 2003 (we also use the outlook integration components in our environment), and then I added an "install software" step, pointing to the pre-reqs package I created so that we can get the C++ Runtime components installed.

Then, to install the rightfax client, I added a "run command line" task in the task sequence, and in the command portion, I ran the following command: setup.exe /quiet=true /allowShutdown=false /add="FaxUtil,FaxCtrl," /rightFaxServer="myservername". In the "start in" portion, I specified the network path to where my package is stored, and also ticked the "package" check box and selected the package I initially created for this task.


Upon deploying a new machine then, the HP Laserjet printer is automatically installed, after which we install office, and then the C++ runtime components, and then finally, the rightfax 9.4 client, which will use the HP Laserjet driver as its base driver.

To finish it all off, I edited the loging script for our organization to just run one final command (can be run in normal user mode) to delete this temporary printer that we created during this setup. This was the command used:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /dl /n "TempPrinter"

You can of course use some logic to determine if the printer exists before deleting it or not, but that will depend on your login script language, etc.

There we go. That's the basic outline on how to get the new Rigthfax 9.4 client installed on a new machine, with the proper driver, during an OSD task sequence build.